Mural Mosaic becomes a staple of Lacombe’s downtown

Lacombe recently came together to create a work of art that will be a landmark in the City’s downtown for years to come.

The Mural Mosaic, which features some of the most recognizable treasures in Lacombe, was originally slated to be a Canada 150, but due to budget constraints was pushed to be part of this years’s Culture and Harvest Festival.

“We put this one on the map for this year and we reached out to the community for what they would like to see in it,” Organizer Maureen MacKenzie said. “We had a lot of submissions, but the most popular ones were the Flat Iron Building, our trees and the Research Station.

“With the research station, there is so much being done there but the one thing that was really significant was the development of the Lacombe pig.”

Once a concept was created from local submissions, it was then submitted to the Mural Mosaic team to be mapped out.

“They came back with this design with the pig hanging out. It is awesome,” MacKenzie said.

To complete the mosaic, 488 out of over 600 tiles were created by locals over the course of three days.

“The community embraced the project and we had so many families and our eldest participant was 93. She was a beautiful woman. It was one of those projects that everyone rallied around and created something outstanding,” she said.

The remaining tiles were created by the Mural Mosaic team in order to properly map out the design. Once completed, the Mosaic was put up on the east side of the Provincial Building downtown, where it will call home for the foreseeable future.

They are painted on Dibond panels, which is really sturdy,” MacKenzie said. “We used acrylic paint which dries really well and then they seal coated it. Being on an east wall, it only gets sun for part of the day which helps too.

“They have them all across Canada, they are wearing really well and we figure around 10 years and hopefully much longer than that.”

She added, “If anything ever happens to the building, it has been done in a way that it can be taken down and put somewhere else. It is Lacombe’s forever.”